Month: March 2009

I’ve been saying it. Television still can deliver emotion better than any other media.
New business models are needed, but the answer lies in creative and innovative content. That can’t be outsourced like other business functions.
So the headline in MEDIAWEEK came a no surprise. New Devices Impactful, But TV Still Rules.Katy Bachman writes: The new media revolution may be coming, but it hasn’t quite taken over yet. For all the fuss over the plethora of digital media devices, the TV screen is still by far the most popular media source for all consumers, both young and old, according to a landmark study commissioned by Nielsen-backed Council for Research Excellence.

The CRE study reports, consumers, on average, spend:

67% of their media time with TV (including DVRs, DVDs and games

About 2 minutes a day watching video via the Internet

A fraction of a minute watching mobile video.

Even among 18-24-year-olds, the average amount of time spent watching live TV (209.9 minutes) surpassed the total amount of computer screen time (169.5 minutes).

Glimmer of Hope

“Increasingly our clients are frightened by the onset of the DVR. There’s been talk that the 30-second spot is dead and that young people don’t watch TV anymore,” said Shari Anne Brill, chair of CRE’s media consumption and engagement committee and senior vp, director of programming for Carat told Bachman. “We wanted to verify or dispel those myths.”

Facebook’s re-design is getting some tweaking.
After a deluge of negative feedback and accusations the social media giant was trying to become more “twitter-like”, Facebook Product Director Christopher Cox unveiled the changes in his blog on Thursday.

The changes already in the works include:

Live Updating: You won’t have to refresh the page to see what’s new.

Photo tags: Facebook will add photos tagged with a person’s friends to her stream.

Applications: Users will have the ability to cut down on the application-related content that’s showing up in streams.

Highlights: This section in the right-hand column will update more frequently and show more content so it’ll be more like the old News Feed.

Requests: Friend requests and event invites will be moved to the top of the right-hand column so they’re more prominent.

Friends lists: Users will be able to create a new list of friends with which to filter their streams.

Following these five business practices may not solve all the problems. Each newspaper (TV Station?) has its own personality, formed by the relationship between its journalists and readers, and governed by forces that extend beyond the marketplace. It’s up to each publisher to consider the options and make decisions. Doing nothing is not an option.

Follow the dominoes
The recession has put lots of people out of work and the layoffs and firings have a ripple effect. For every job lost, there’s likely to be another. Tell the story by following the dominoes.
The suggestion comes from TV news manager Griff Potter…

Missing Money (Missingmoney.com) was featured on CBS’s Early Show today.

Missingmoney.com helps you located your money, or a relative’s assets, that went missing and are now inside the $33 billion in unclaimed property on government books.

Yes, $33 billion of missing money.

Items include more than cash. They can include trust distributions, insurance payments, CDs, even the contents of safe deposit boxes. These can be yours or a relative’s that you are entitled to. Along with the National Association of Unclaimed Property Administrators’ Web site, their website, endorsed by NAUPA, helps search the files for you easier.